A Maryland woman accused of strangling her two youngest children to death 11 years ago recently texted her mother from jail.
“We need a peaceful protest on Saturday morning at 8:30 here,” Catherine Hoggle wrote, suggesting the rally be held three days before a court hearing in a case long stalled because Hoggle has been deemed too psychotic to stand trial. The protest, she reasoned, could “show the judge the support I have.”
Prosecutors in Montgomery County this week argued that and other text messages by Hoggle, 39, show her mental health has markedly improved and she finally should be tried for the 2014 deaths of 2-year-old Jacob and 3-year-old Sarah. “Catherine Hoggle is not the same person she was,” Deputy State’s Attorney Ryan Wechsler said Tuesday.
The two-day hearing before Circuit Court Judge James Bonifant concluded Tuesday, as the judge said he would issue his ruling at 1:30 p.m. Wednesday. It is a huge deal for prosecutors, who over two days advanced by far their strongest case to date that Hoggle is fit for trial. They showed the judge text messages and recordings of phone calls Hoggle made recently from jail.
But the forensic psychiatrist who conducted the most recent court-ordered evaluation of Hoggle testified that Hoggle’s schizophrenia renders her incapable of effectively communicating with her attorney or participating in a trial defense.
“When you talk to her superficially, she can give you answers to your questions,” said Nicole Johnson, a physician at the Clifton T. Perkins Hospital Center, a maximum-security psychiatric facility in Jessup, Maryland. “When you begin to delve into some of the components that she would need in order to assist her attorney and really understand conceptually what’s going on, you begin to see the disorganization of her presentation.”
Should the prosecutors’ effort fall short, Hoggle could be ordered held at a state forensic hospital and eventually released from custody.
Bonifant has a lot to think about. In 2022, he ordered murder charges against Hoggle dropped, citing state limits on how long a mentally incompetent defendant can be detained without facing a trial. But as he did so, Bonifant ordered Hoggle to remain in a psychiatric hospital under Maryland’s civil commitment procedures. Hoggle was released earlier this year. Prosecutors then reindicted her on the murder counts, and she has been detained since.
“The issue in this case, which has been the issue since 2014, is the ability to rationally convey real information,” Hoggle’s longtime attorney, David Felsen, said in court Tuesday. “It’s not that she can plan, it’s do the plans make sense.”
Prosecutors called a different forensic psychiatrist to testify, Christiane Tellefsen, a former director of Perkins hospital. She evaluated Hoggle in 2019 — finding her incompetent — but reached a different conclusion after an evaluation of her within the last few months.
“The thing that was the holdup was her psychosis — that paranoia, that disorganization of her thinking,” Tellefsen said in court. “She’d get a little bit scrambled in her logic. After her charges were dropped, her condition improved.”
“She does have schizophrenia, which is a chronic relapsing illness,” Tellefsen added. “She does not have an acute state of it now. … She’s not psychotic anymore. She’s rational.”
Tellefsen said the text message Hoggle wrote about holding a protest was telling. “She’s thinking about a lot of different angles to her defense,” Tellefsen said.
On Sept. 7, 2014, according to authorities, Hoggle slipped off with her youngest child, Jacob, strangled him and disposed of his body, and a short time later did the same with Sarah. Soon after her arrest,a doctor determined her incompetent to stand trial — a finding that held for years and after repeated evaluations.
In multiple interviews with detectives since 2014, Hoggle has repeatedly denied harming her children but given only vague explanations of what happened to them, according to court filings. The children have not been seen since 2014, and authorities have long concluded they are dead.
In court this week, prosecutors played parts of a recent, recorded interrogation of Hoggle by two Montgomery County detectives. Investigators could be seen pressing Hoggle about what happened to her children.
“You know what the topic is that maybe will trigger you. And that’s why you can’t talk about it?” Detective Mike Carin asked.
“I just don’t talk about it with people I don’t know,” Hoggle responded.
In a recent text message shown in court, Hoggle wrote: “My secret for navigating my many different environments is I’m a chameleon.”
Tellefsen said the term showed Hoggle’s ability to fit in — whether in jail or as heard in recorded phone calls of Hoggle speaking with another parent. “It was like two suburban moms talking to each other in those conversations,” Tellefsen said.
In recorded calls with her father, as played in court, Hoggle spoke about a group home where she’d stayed recently on Maryland’s Eastern Shore, and how she’d called the director there to apologize for all the media attention. Hoggle also suggested to her dad that another attorney be retained to serve as “second chair” to Felsen.
In court on Tuesday, Montgomery County State’s Attorney John McCarthy urged Bonifant to reflect on how Hoggle seemed in the text messages and recorded calls.
“They scream, ‘I’m competent,’” McCarthy said. “They scream, ‘I’m in control.’ They scream, ‘I’m making the decisions here.’”
Jacob and Sarah’s father, Troy Turner, has long believed Hoggle killed them. After court on Tuesday, he said he was especially pleased by Tellefsen’s testimony.
“I’m more hopeful today than I have been throughout this process,” Turner said. “The former director of Clifton T. Perkins Hospital Center says the woman accused of murdering my babies is competent to stand trial.”
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